Plenty of us have highly strung morals we claim to uphold but, for most of us, we just do the minimum we can to appease our consciences.

When I sit across the table from Michaela Smith, 57, I realise I’ve struck upon one of the few people who said “enough is enough” about something and decided she meant it.

She doesn’t want to support supermarkets, so she doesn’t.

And, without them knowing it, the unwitting businesses practically support her.

This is because the majority of her food comes from ‘skipping’, where people head to shops and scope out their bins after hours.

They then reclaim any food deemed unworthy of the shelves but that is still, plenty of people would agree, okay to eat.

Michaela alongside her partner, who asked not to be named, have been doing it for two-and-a-half years.

They live in large shared accommodation in Leicester, and they have fed huge groups of people from the produce they find.

“We’ve had times where we’ve had 23 people living here and we’ve all ate for free.

“We have weekly house meals and we try and cook with what there is,” Michaela says.

Michaela has been skipping for food for two-and-a-half years (Image: Beth Walsh)

The most wasteful times are around public holidays, “when the shops expect people to stock up”, I am told, and bread is the most discarded food.

“The amount of bread. It’s criminal.

“If you look at the cost of wheat and energy and water and in human labour. To think it’s just thrown straight in the bin,” Michaela says.

They then start to regale me with some of the most unusual bin finds.

These include a Christmas tree thrown out at the start of December, a whole container of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, 300 eggs in one place, a skip so full of beer they could not take it all and a bottle of Jim Bean.